Flood and Fire Risk Operational Information Services

User Segments

Four main categories of user organizations are served:

• Policy decision bodies that include the national-level authorities in charge of civil protection and risks prevention policies; and the sub-national authorities that have a decision power, at their territorial level, in risk management policies implementation and in resources assignment to operational services. In addition to their policy decisional role, these organizations also have operational responsibilities (coordination, decision-making) during the risk management, and thus have specific information requirements;

   

• Risk mapping and prevention services, the institutional services in charge of the risk analysis and risk prevention policies (e.g. regional environmental agencies, forestry services, river basin management authorities);

   

• Risk anticipation and forecasting services, the institutional services in charge of the risk anticipation and forecasting (services that work in close collaboration with the Meteorological services);

   

• Rescue management and fire fighting services, the local, regional, national and European Civil Protection and rescue services that are in charge of the overall response management.

Services

Eight GSE Flood and Fire services are delivered at different geographical scales (from pan-European to national, sub-national and local scales):

1 Service common to flood and forest fire risk management:

• Assets Mapping:
  yearly mapping of areas subject to natural hazards, to provide up-to-date information on human settlements at high and very high resolutions (including isolated habitat detection). This service is aimed to provide information about the elements at risk to civil protection services (rescue plans) and to the risk prevention services (risk prevention plans).

4 Services dedicated to forest fire risk management:

• Dynamic Fire Risk Monitoring:
  daily fire risk indexes combining meteorological and EO-based vegetation information at two different scales; Fire risk index with European and National coverage.

   

• Fires Monitoring at medium resolution:
  detection and monitoring of fires using Middle-Resolution satellites to provide a 'global view' of on-going large fires in support to fires management at regional level, and for trans-regional / trans-national cooperation of fire fighting services.

   

• Fires Rapid Mapping:
  on-request rapid mapping of burnt areas, at high resolution just after the event.

   

• Burn Scars Mapping:
  seasonal mapping of burnt areas, for better fire damage assessment, risk assessment, planning, and land use management.

   

3 Services dedicated to flood risk management:

• Flash Flood Early Warning:
  real-time service for the prediction of flash floods to be deployed on large portions of territory, allowing better anticipation of flash floods and localisation of the forecasted events;

   

• Floods Rapid Mapping:
  rapid mapping of floods just after the event, with the double objective of providing information support during the crisis response and of capitalising the flood extent information for flood prevention purposes;

   

• Flood Risk Analysis:
  regional service providing added-value products complementary to floods monitoring:
  mapping of past flood events based on EO archives, flood risk analysis based on hydraulic simulations, flood information capitalisation into a “flood database”;

   

User Feedback & Involvement

The working process is based on an annual working cycle, with systematic user feedback and improvement of the service provision. User feedback after each year of service delivery is analysed to derive necessary service evolutions. This iterative methodology has proven fruitful to best answer to the users needs.

The user feedback can be summarised with the following user statements:

• “The services proposed have proved to be of significant importance in both prevention and preparedness phases and will make contingency planning more accurate and help save time in some major tasks”

   

• “In the preparedness phase, including early warning, the ‘flash flood early warning service’ provides innovative and important assistance for protecting citizens and mitigating the consequences of emergencies. The better calculation of fire risk indexes will allow a better emergency management in general”

   

• “Concerning the response phase, the proposed services will help to get supplementary information. Thus decisions regarding the allocation of resources and the setting of priorities can be facilitated”

   

• “For the post-response phase, the services will assist in completing the existing data and will constitute a significant part of the elements needed for the damage evaluation and lessons learnt. This will be extremely important for the future development of preventive actions, contingency planning and preparedness, for the calibration of different existing models, and for the education and training of personnel”.

The GSE Flood and Fire services have been established taking into consideration the priorities expressed by user organisations from five European Countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden, and representing all major actors of the risk management communities at all levels (European, National, Regional and Local levels).

The users community is actively involved in the deployment of the GSE Flood and Fire services through their participation to:

• the Strategy Committee, which include representatives from the National Civil Protection Authorities of 5 European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden);

   

• the User Executive Body, which federates the end-users and brings their “voice” in the management of the service network;

   

• the Core End-users Groups, which are involved in each service delivery with the main role to assess and qualify the services.

Future Visions

The consolidation phase (2003-2004) has aimed at developing and delivering four precursor services validated by the core users:

• The Asset Mapping Service;

   

• The Burn Scar Mapping Service;

   

• The Flash Flood Early Warning Service;

   

• The Flood Risk Analysis Service.

The operational deployment phase (2005-2007) consists in extending the service portfolio by including additional services but also, at the same time, in a progressive deployment in other European countries (Portugal, Greece, Finland, Slovaquia, Bulgaria).

The target is to have, by 2008, the users funding the operational delivery of the GSE Flood and Fire services, and Europe (the European Commission and the European Space Agency) taking care of the GMES sensors continuity, their set-up and operations.

In the ten year perspective, further improvements of these services will be made by means of new satellite capacities and R&D advances.

New Satellites capacities will bring several major improvements:

• Enhanced resolution with PLEIADES. This will allow to improve the monitoring of the areas at risk (Asset Mapping Service);

   

• Better all-weather acquisition frequency with Cosmo-SkyMed and TERRASAR. This will allow to improve the rapid mapping and monitoring of disaster events.

   

Many improvements can also be expected from R&D advances:

• Meso-scale meteorological forecasting models, to improve the floods and fires forecasting;

   

• New data assimilation techniques to allow more accurate monitoring of soil and vegetation status, and hence better forecasting services;

   

• Better satellite images interpretation techniques coupling with socio-economical data, to allow advanced products in asset mapping and damage assessment;

   

• Automatic “change detection” techniques for faster disaster mapping;

   

• New middle-resolution sensors for near real-time fires monitoring.

   

Complementary projects - EC/National

The GSE open partnership approach will permit to extend the Flood and Fire Service Portfolio, considering new validated services coming either from the ESA DUE –EOMD projects, from national achievements, and from the PREVIEW integrated project of the 6th Framework Programme from the European Commission.